Chapter 81: The God of Wealth

“The corpse is gone?” Ning Zhe tilted his head slightly, glancing at Shi Yurou’s left hand.

Two loops of red cord were tied around her left wrist, threaded with four copper coins.

“According to you, after the corpse vanished, each of you and your brother lost one copper coin—these are the ones on your wrist, right?”

“Yes.” Shi Yurou stepped forward, extending her pale wrist toward Ning Zhe so he could see clearly the coins tied to the red cord.

Normal copper coins are round outside and square inside, symbolizing heaven’s roundness and earth’s squareness, and also implying that without rules, there can be no order—but the four coins on her wrist were the opposite: square outside and round inside, gleaming with a brass metallic sheen under the light.

“Could you untie the cord so I can examine them?” Ning Zhe asked.

Shi Yurou shook her head gently: “I’m sorry. Before he died, my father specifically instructed that these coins must always be carried on our persons, and never given to anyone else—not even my mother.”

“I see…” Ning Zhe waved his hand, signaling her to raise her wrist higher so he could better observe the inscriptions on the inverted square-outside, round-inside coins.

Both sides of each coin bore characters: one side read 【Peace, Joy, Happiness】, the other 【All Things Go Well】—no one knew which side was the front.

“These coins have been with me and my brother since we were old enough to remember. There were originally five, but after last night’s vigil, one went missing.” Shi Yurou continued, showing Ning Zhe the empty knot on the red cord where a coin had been.

What connection was there between the vanished corpse and the missing coin?

“Did your father say anything else?” Ning Zhe tore his gaze from her wrist and asked.

“Nothing else.” Shi Yurou shook her head. “Father said that after his death, we were to invite everyone on the list, bring them to the study, and inform them of his will—they would know what to do.”

Ning Zhe scratched his head.

If Yu Zi himself or another Ascended on the list were here, they might already understand—but Ning Zhe’s memory of Yu Zi was extremely limited. After hearing Ji Baichang’s will, he hadn’t had an epiphany; at best, he was completely in the dark.

He didn’t even know who Ji Baichang was.

Better to start from what’s known…

First, after Ji Baichang died, his corpse moved—vanished in the middle of the night.

Given that earlier, at Bishui Bay Estate, Te Rang had possessed and controlled the corpses of the dead, and knowing Ji Baichang had connections with multiple Ascended and was very likely one himself, Ning Zhe could reasonably assume that the ghost Ji Baichang controlled had taken over his corpse after death, triggering a bizarre event on a macro scale.

But this bizarre event didn’t seem as extreme as Te Rang’s: when Ji Baichang’s corpse changed, Shi Yurou and Ji Yunying were both present—and both survived.

“Perhaps their survival was tied to those coins they carried…” Ning Zhe added silently.

Before his death, Ji Baichang left a will instructing his children to invite the Ascended on the list to his funeral—likely because he knew that after his death, the rules would spiral out of control, and he needed other Ascended to help resolve the bizarre event his death had triggered.

Relationships among Ascended were loose; there was no unified organization or governing body. The Ascended Network was merely an obscure forum where some Ascended occasionally gathered to exchange information—not an official organization.

Thus, the Ascended Network didn’t function like a fantasy adventure drama, posting notices on bulletin boards: “Bizarre event erupted in XX location, Ascended invited to resolve it, reward: XXX…” Such things simply didn’t exist on the Ascended Network.

Every Ascended was a lone wolf—like a world of cultivators with no sects, only wandering cultivators in unclaimed land.

“Is that so? ‘Bring them to the study, tell them the will, and they’ll know what to do’… Is that it?”

Ning Zhe murmured softly, scanning the room, beginning to observe the study’s environment.

As Shi Yurou said, the study remained exactly as it had been before Ji Baichang’s death, unchanged in the slightest: inkstone, brush, paper, and ink were all laid out; beneath the paperweight lay half a completed calligraphy piece, its text reading:

【I’d rather eat no meat than live without】

No second line followed.

Ning Zhe glanced at it twice more, thinking the brushwork was mediocre—soft and limp, like a man with depleted kidneys. It couldn’t compare to the vigorous strokes of the old man in Gu Bei Town who wrote Spring Festival couplets for fifteen yuan. Was this really Yunzhou’s great calligrapher?

Maybe this was art—ordinary people just didn’t understand. He turned his gaze elsewhere: shelves against the wall held various porcelain pieces and scholar’s ornaments—vases, tea pets, teapots, a dragon’s blood tree bonsai, and several plain jade pendants hanging on the rack. The walls were covered with Ji Baichang’s own calligraphy and paintings.

On a nearby wooden tea table sat a full set of Ru kiln tea ware. A small charcoal stove, its flame gentle and steady, held a round clay teakettle. Shi Yurou had rolled up her sleeves and sat beside the table on a rattan chair, using a bamboo tea needle to break apart a tea cake.

Her movements were clumsy—she clearly didn’t often brew tea for others.

Ning Zhe stepped closer, glancing at the vigorous, stable flame beneath the kettle, and murmured: “Jujube seed charcoal? Quite refined… But aren’t you using your father’s things by boiling tea here?”

He remembered Ji Baichang’s will had instructed Shi Yurou and her brother to keep all his belongings untouched.

“Guests must be served tea—it’s proper etiquette,” Shi Yurou replied, her voice soft and soothing, calming the spirit. “Besides, my father usually used a different purple clay tea set. This one belonged to my mother. We’ll put it away after serving.”

“I see.” Ning Zhe’s gaze shifted from the small stove to the full tea set, finally settling on the teapot covered in cracks: “While etiquette is good, a seven-ju teapot is never actually used for brewing tea—it’s a scholar’s ornament.”

“Huh?” Shi Yurou’s eyes widened, then she realized she’d hastily grabbed the wrong pot.

She quickly removed the cracked pot from the table and replaced it with an ordinary porcelain one, apologizing softly: “I’m so sorry—I’ve embarrassed you…”

Ning Zhe shook his head, saying nothing, then bent down and picked up a toad resting on the tea tray.

It was a tea pet carved from yellow stone—a fist-sized golden-toad, its mouth holding a copper coin identical to those on Shi Yurou’s wrist: square outside, round inside. Its rounded back felt smooth and warm, well-cared for over many years.

=9+book bar

Ning Zhe returned the golden-toad to its place and continued observing the study.

Aside from the pot Shi Yurou had just removed, the ornament shelf held several other teapots—small-mouthed, large-bellied, all covered in cracks.

“Clearly, Ji Baichang loved to pretend he was cultured—but he only learned the worst of it,” Ning Zhe sighed, gaining some insight into Ji Baichang’s character.

These cracked teapots were a special kind of scholar’s ornament, originating from ancient repair craftsmen.

Back then, porcelain was still precious; if accidentally broken, people wouldn’t discard it but took it to a potter to be repaired and reused. The craftsman would reassemble the cracked pieces, securing the seams with metal clamps—making it usable again.

Repairing pots was merely a humble trade, but the nobility of ancient times—perhaps bored from having too much—decided that repaired pots had a unique beauty in their imperfection, and began deliberately smashing valuable teapots, repairing them, and displaying them for admiration.

This repair process was called “ju.”

Eventually, “ju” developed into an industry with standardized procedures: since manually smashing pots produced unpredictable crack patterns that ruined aesthetics, people began filling teapots with dried yellow beans, sealing them with water, and letting the beans swell overnight until the pot cracked evenly. Teapots cracked this way had uniform, pleasing fractures, and looked more attractive after repair.

Some even took already-repaired pots, placed them back in beans, cracked them again, and repaired them once more.

Repeatedly cracking and repairing—seven times total—produced the ornament known as the “seven-ju teapot.”

Ning Zhe’s verdict: these people had eaten too much.

Counting them, there were exactly five seven-ju teapots on the shelf. In the center, positioned as if surrounded by stars, stood a small statue.

Carved from yellow stone, it depicted a seated child, about five or six years old, with a broad forehead, round cheeks, thick earlobes, a lucky demeanor, and dressed in luxurious clothing.

“This was my father’s favorite statue,” Shi Yurou said, rising from the tea table and coming beside Ning Zhe to explain.

“A statue of a god?” Ning Zhe hissed softly: “What god is this child?”

The seated child had no lotus pedestal beneath him—clearly not a Buddhist statue or child deity. Ning Zhe couldn’t recall any other religion with a deity matching this form.

Shi Yurou thought for a moment, then answered: “I once heard my father say—it’s the God of Wealth.”

(End of Chapter)